Tuesday, March 29, 2011

A Quick Note

As I was reading Moloch's recent commentary regarding what he sees as the newest CM fad, a moment of fear struck me when I read this:

While it does not hurt to involve some things such as giving offerings to Spirits in Evocations, even though the bibles of such things (re: the grimoires) do not mention it, too many CM’s want to copy how things are done in the African Traditional Religions and then claim it as something they’ve been doing for years.

Valentine has, clearly, recently dragged me into a discussion I plan to continue (most likely tonight at a certain period of time), but let me take a moment to point out that this is the reason I don't normally try to discuss certain subjects. I do not want you thinking these are necessarily practices I have made use of, or that I believe I completely understand what I'm looking at (honestly? Some of it looks very, very alien).

So, just to be clear: I don't practice voodoo, hoodoo, obeah, Palo, or Santeria. I do try to keep myself from being a completely ignorant dick, however, and that requires a bit of looking into things. Please do not, at any point, think I'm claiming any type of expertise or that these subjects have always been a part of my practices. I did try Obi divination even as a late teen, but I recently discovered while reading Obi: Oracle of Cuban Santeria by Ocha'ni Lele... that I was doing it wrong 100% of the time. Black and Hyatt (Urban Voodoo, P. 130-133) seem to have conveniently forgotten to mention that when one is doing the divination technique they are also communing with a spirit. This throws any attempt at divination I've ever tried with the system out the window, because I was treating my four coins (don't start, I already know) as if they were just descriptors... And I definitely didn't try to tie them to the spirit, or anything else.

3 comments:

Black and Hyatt's Urban Voodoo is an odious, racist, ill-written piece of crap - and that is coming from someone who rarely tosses the "R-word" around. The best thing I can say about it is that they never wrote a sequel.

@Kenaz: Ill-written and poorly researched I would certainly say. But, and maybe the years since I purchased it and my love of intoxication have caused my brain to be a bit hazy on this matter, why do you consider the contents racist?